Gene Luen Yang

As much as the kids who grew up with Harry Potter may want to become real wizards, there's really not much it'll ever happen. But a new work for middle schoolers focuses on a secret school that teaches some real-world skills (or maybe a slightly amplified version). The new graphic novel Secret Coders, by Gene Luen Yang (The Shadow Hero) and Mike Holmes (Bravest Warriors), makes computer programming an adventure.

In a speech at the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress last weekend, The Shadow Hero writer Gene Luen Yang threw down the gauntlet.

Yang challenged comics creators to overcome their fears of bring criticized for inaccurately portraying characters who are different from them -- in terms of race, gender, or other identifying factors. In brief, he told writers to do some research and get it right, but first and foremost to step outside themselves.

With more than 200 panels to choose from at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday alone, the programming at the show can be completely overwhelming -- and it's far too easy to miss a panel you know you might have loved, or to find yourself on the wrong side of the con floor five minutes before a great panel is about to start!

Take heart, brave reader. ComicsAlliance has sifted through the schedule to offer up our pick of the best panels, screenings, and events, starting with programming for Thursday 24th July -- with an emphasis, of course, on comics programming.

Even though it only came out today from First Second, Gene Yang and Sonny Liew's The Shadow Hero is already one of my favorite graphic novels of the year. Through their revival of an obscure Golden Age character called the Green Turtle, Yang and Liew have gone back to tell a story about one of the forgotten heroes of the first wave of American comics, blending a story full of action and adventure with rumors about the true motivations behind what may have been the first Asian-American superhero.

To find out more, I spoke to Yang about how he discovered the Green Turtle, what he hopes comes out of his work on a public domain character, and why he focused on the Green Turtle's relationship with his mom.

It's already been a pretty amazing year for original graphic novels with Kyle Starks' Sexcastle being funded on Kickstarter and Box Brown's long-awaited Andre the Giant in stores now, but we're not done getting great comics yet. The latest contender for OGN Of The Year is The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew, out this July from First Second.

In their story, they tell one of the most exciting and heartfelt superhero stories I've seen in a while, and they do it by reviving one of the most interesting characters of all time. See, The Shadow Hero is actually a Golden Age character called the Green Turtle, and while his adventures on the page never really caught on, the story behind the character is fascinating -- especially how Yang and Liew use that real life story to shape the one they're telling in the book.

Following the immense critical and commercial success of his two volume epic Boxers and Saints, Gene Luen Yang announced his next project for First Second, The Shadow Hero. Written by Yang and illustrated by Sonny Liew, The Shadow Hero is an origin story for The Green Turtle, a golden age pulp hero who first appeared in 1944′s Blazing Comics #1.

Created by cartoonist Chu F. Hing, The Green Turtle was the first ever Asian-American superhero, and one of the first characters to have an Asian-American creator. The Shadow Hero will be a revival for the character, as he stars in new stories for the first time in decades.

But before its release, Yang and Liew created a preview for the book, first published in the pages of the Shattered Anthology, which Tor.com has just released in full color.

Gene Luen Yang is on a heck of a roll lately. Hot off the heels of his two-volume graphic novel Boxers and Saints, Yang has just announced his next project: A graphic novel with artist Sonny Liew about the first-ever Asian-American superhero.

The new book, The Shadow Hero, offers up an origin story for that character, The Green Turtle, who first appeared way back in 1944's Blazing Comics #1.

Multiple Eisner Award winner Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese, Level Up, Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise) is about to release his most ambitious comic project yet. Together they're Boxers & Saints, a pair of graphic novels (available both together and separately) that tell the story of China's Boxer Rebellion from two opposing, but connected points of view. For Yang, the son of Chinese immigrants and a practicing Catholic, it's a personal work of historical fiction that delves into a turbulent and deadly time in China's history when young kung fu-practicing peasants organized to combat colonial powers, Christian missionaries from the west and Chinese Christians who had converted. ComicsAlliance got in touch with Yang to see how he navigated this complicated history and what artistic decisions went into telling these two intersecting stories.

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